This means that on average, all things being equal statistically, anyone with a healthy number of questions should have a tenacious badge (set at 20%) in hand! If you answer exclusively in the tags where the view count (not question count) sits in the bottom half (after pre-excluding tags with less than 10 questions per month; but do avoid the 10th to 25th percentile), you have a fair chance of getting Unsung hero (25% answers with 0-votes).

I leave the original text of this question below.

I reckon it is Unsung Hero. Maybe a tie between this and Copy Editor, but the requirements are a bit different.

This is the badge that possibly requires the least amount of work. All you need to do is to know that such a badge exists, and to have some friends. The requirement is at least 40 answered questions, with 10 (25%) of them at 0 votes. So once you hit about 34 or so questions, at the current rate of 0-vote accepted answers (pulling statistics from the air) you should have around 4 or 5 0-vote answers. This is where your friends come into play.. [edit - It is not so easy to game after all.. only accepted answers older than 10 days are considered so back to collecting 4-leaf clovers to make this badge (you can still do it using very obscure tags..)

On the flip-side, it is impossible to "earn" this badge. You either game the system to get the badge (see previous point), or you have to be extremely lucky. The longer you have been on an SE site, the luckier you have to be. Even if you went to low volume tags and answered a question, there may be someone who just happens to drive by and vote on your answer. You can try for low rep/new users who may not be aware they can upvote (or choose exclusively <15 rep users who can not upvote) - yet other users will come by and vote you up (as they should given this is how the site works!).

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but the requirement is still that asker upvote is not exempt?

I read somewhere else that badges are supposed to enforce some positive behaviour, what exactly would this encourage? In fact, I find myself not upvoting answers if I see

the vote count at 0

either the answer has been accepted or there are no other answers

the answer is from a <10k user

The 3rd point is because once a user gets to 10k or more, it is highly unlikely (s)he will ever see Unsung Hero.

Some questions:

Has a badge ever been retracted [edit: what is this Tireless badge that I read of and is not in the list?], and whether yes or no, do you think this badge should be retracted (in its current implementation)?

It appears to be a "I'm sorry your answers seem so unloved, here's a badge" award. Not unlike "Everyone gets an award at the school talent show!" or the "You were rarely chosen for a team when we played dodgeball award".
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Adam DavisFeb 7 '11 at 22:00

9

With the question velocity as high as it is, it seems quite possible that a new user with expertise in obscure tags could head straight toward this badge. I agree that the badge is impossible for experienced users to get, and indeed doesn't encourage any positive behavior from them, but if it encourages those new niche users, isn't it still a good thing?
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JefromiFeb 7 '11 at 22:01

@cyberkiwi: I don't know that I'd describe not being up-voted as particularly lucky. It's not even particularly unlucky. Answering obscure questions is largely - by necessity - its own reward, like choosing a career counting dead fish it's something you choose to do because you really care about it. The badge recognizes that. Yeah, you can game it - but then it's completely meaningless. Wanna talk luck? I have a "Great Answer" badge for a trivial answer to a simple question that just happens to be ridiculously common... There's no way I could have predicted or worked for that.
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Shog9♦Feb 8 '11 at 0:49

@cyberkiwi: Perhaps I'm not understanding your concern... Are you bothered by the intent of the badge (recognize helpful behavior in obscure topics), or do you merely feel that it fails to recognize the behavior it purports to? Have you read the answers in the second link I posted? Do you agree/disagree with devinb? (FWIW: pretty sure the n answers badge has been proposed, but it kinda just rewards grinding - if you think about it, most of the badges require some sort of external influence to be awarded).
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Shog9♦Feb 8 '11 at 1:03

I personally was on the precipice of getting unsung hero for a long time until I got a series of 3-4 0-voted answers, and finally got it.
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Sam I amDec 26 '13 at 22:03

and the easiest gold badge, by far, is fanatic
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Sam I amDec 26 '13 at 22:05

6 Answers
6

I had a colleague who earned it, mostly for answers in the area of computer security. It's not an area where many people seem to vote anything up for some reason. Given that we employed him for about 5-6 years to work in this area, he was definitely an expert, and he was very happy when he received it; it made his day and encouraged him to answer more. I think that's what the badge is for. OTOH, it's not there to encourage me; I've earned gold badges through the more normal routes (such as taking my laptop with me on vacation…)

I see some people saying that the badge is awarded for posts in low-view tags, and this may be true, but that is not how I got tenacious and unsung hero. I was awarded the badges for posts in the android tag, which is number 11 on the list of popular tags. This tag has a lot of posts (10-20%) by brand new 1-rep users: as of this minute, 4 of the newest 10 questions are from first time posters, and this is not unusual. A lot of these users don't have much Java experience, and their questions might seem quite mundane or uninteresting to more experienced members. Perhaps because of this, very few answers get upvoted.

I think that helping these new users in high-volume tags is also a benefit of the badge. If everyone only answered the really interesting +5 questions that get a lot of views then the site wouldn't work as well as it does. I think that encouraging people to help new users with the more "boring" problems is one of the other benefits of the badge, and should not be overlooked.

The badge has simple agenda: reward people for answering the questions from new users, which often don't have rights to upvote (or are not used to the concept of upvoting, instead they only accept answers).

I've recently got Unsung Hero, though I didn't even try to get it. So it's definitely possible to earn.

If you're mostly involved in fast-gun answering of simple, but attention gaining questions in heavy activity topics, then your chances to get that badge are lowered, but you get more reputation instead.

I believe the intent was to encourage people to answer questions even in the case where it was unlikely that they'd get an upvote. It has 600+ people who were awarded it - It's hardly the most impossible badge to get.

Given that Stack Overflow has changed over time and upvotes are much more rare than they used to be, I don't think it's a bad badge. The (minimal) good behavior it encourages is worthwhile.

The only bad behavior I believe it could encourage is gaming, either through carefully crafting mediocre answers or sockpuppet accounts.

That is exactly what I mean - 600+ is a terribly easy to achieve Gold badge, easier than the Silver Generalist by far. Yet once you are a veteran on SO, there is no real way to earn it. where it was unlikely that they'd get an upvote - in which case it is just as unlikely to get an acceptance which is a requirement for this badge?
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RichardTheKiwiFeb 7 '11 at 22:13

I agree with what @cyberkiwi said... In my experience, it's not that you're unlikely to get an upvote. If you answer a question from a user who doesn't know/care how to use SO, you are much more likely to get no acceptanceandno upvote, despite having the only answer. Where's the badge for that?
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Jason PlankFeb 7 '11 at 23:40

I received both Unsung Hero and Tenacious in the ms-access tag. For some reason, people just don't upvote much in that tag. The downside is that you'll never get a Great Question badge there, as no question has ever had more than 99 votes. You're also unlikely to ever get a Good Question badge there, either.

The counts for this question are extremely improbable given its content and title. Asked one year ago at the time of writing, viewed 17036 times yet only 2 question upvotes and a total of 5 answer upvotes for 4 answers. Such viewer apathy is remarkable and strongly suggests gaming to me.

Edit - sorry for not explaining enough. Apropos the most easily gamed badge, my candidate answer is "Famous question" as illustrated by the linked example.

kinda confused as to what this answer has to do with the question. and the linked question doesn't look out of the ordinary, it's a question with a title that will often show up in google results, hence it's high view count.
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Kevin BFeb 7 '14 at 18:26

To add to Kevin's point, the vast majority of users who find questions through Google searches looking for answers are anonymous users, not registered users with enough rep to vote. Most votes come from regular users finding questions through the site. And in any case, in the improbable event that someone is artificially inflating the vote count, the negative consequences are very low. It's just a badge. It's not actually harming the quality of the site's content in any way. But, as I said, I doubt that to be the case here anyway.
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ServyFeb 7 '14 at 18:40

However, this badge does seem to be the most rewarded gold badge. I'd suspect the majority of them due to questions that are years old or often used as a duplicate rather than any gaming of the system.
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Kevin BFeb 7 '14 at 20:19